Claimed by the Laird. Nicola Cornick

Чтение книги онлайн.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      “WHO THE DEVIL is that?” Allegra asked.

      Christina had been listening vaguely to her father’s plans for a twenty-foot-high Italianate fountain in the middle of the lawn whilst simultaneously wondering what she might spare from the dairy to take on her visit to Mrs. McAlpine in the village that afternoon. The poor woman had just given birth to her sixth child—all boys—and her husband had died in a storm that had taken his fishing boat only eight weeks before. When Allegra stopped walking abruptly and stood staring across the grass toward the castle entrance, she practically tripped over her.

      “Language, Allegra,” Christina said automatically. She had known that having Lachlan around with his blunt conversation would be a bad influence. Gertrude would have the vapors if she heard her daughter speaking like an Edinburgh dandy. And that was another problem; Christina had no idea what she was going to do with Lachlan. He needed a swift kick up the backside to send him back to his wife instead of sulking here at Kilmory.

      “Ladies do not use that phrase,” she said. “It is shockingly vulgar.”

      “They use it when they see a sight like that,” Allegra said. “Who is he?”

      Following her niece’s pointing finger, another sin against etiquette that Christina simply did not have the energy to correct, she saw the tall figure of a man framed in the castle doorway.

      Lucas Ross.

      Her heart began to race. Her breath felt tight in her chest. Suddenly the sun was too hot and too bright.

      “Damnation,” she said involuntarily.

      Allegra giggled. “Aunt Christina! How shockingly vulgar.”

      “Sometimes,” Christina said, “ladylike language simply isn’t forceful enough to express one’s feeling.”

      And staring at a man might also be improper, she thought, but there were times when it was impossible to resist. No man had the right to be as indecently handsome as Lucas Ross.

      In the half-light of the smugglers’ cave the night before, Lucas had looked spectacular enough with his strongly marked black brows, his firm cleft chin and tumbled black hair. There was something about him, an air of arrogant distinction that was innate but powerful, setting him apart from most other men. He had height and a broad-shouldered physique that exuded masculinity of the type Christina had never come across in the airless ballrooms or rarefied libraries of Edinburgh’s academia. Her sisters’ husbands both had something of that charisma and intensity. Christina remembered that she had looked at Lucy and Mairi and felt more than a little jealous of them. But now she thought that such ruthlessness, such uncompromising strength in a man would be too much to handle.

      It seemed ludicrous that Lucas Ross was a servant. He was too tough, too in control to be at the beck and call of others. She pictured him more as a soldier, or a sailor, an adventurer, someone who gave orders rather than took them. He was a man born to lead, not follow. But she was being fanciful. A man could not choose his station in life, nor could he necessarily change it.

      A shiver skittered down her spine. Lucas had descended the castle steps and was striding across the lawn toward them. He looked very purposeful, and she suddenly felt a desperate urge to run away. It was ridiculous, but even so the panic clogged her throat. He had not followed her instructions from the previous night. That should have told her something about the man he was and she should have thought twice before refusing to allow Galloway to appoint him.

      Well, it was done now, and Lucas would simply have to accept it. She was the Duke of Forres’s daughter and she did not expect to be confronted by a servant or be required to justify her decisions. All the same, as Lucas approached the three of them, the breath caught in her throat and she had to stop herself from pressing a hand against her bodice where her heart was tripping crazily, as though she had run too far, too fast.

      Suddenly Lucas was standing directly in front of her. His physical presence was so powerful that Christina took a step back even though there was nothing remotely threatening in his manner. Their eyes met. His were so brown they were almost black, dark as a winter’s night beneath those straight black brows, his expression impossible to read. The rest of his face was equally daunting. There was no warmth or softness in it. It was all hard angles and darkness. He held Christina’s gaze; she tried to look away and found that she could not. She was floored by the same physical awareness, fiercely intense, that had possessed her the previous night.

      Then it was over, as though it had never been, and he bowed most elegantly.

      “Lady Christina?” he said. His tone was deferential, in contradiction to the expression in his eyes, which was anything but respectful. “My name is Lucas Ross. I do not believe we have met, unless you have the advantage of me....” He let the words hang for a moment and Christina’s heart gave a wayward thump.

      He had recognized her. He knew she was the woman he had kissed the previous night.